Sophia Jackson
Stories
11
Chapters
5,834
Words
1.6 M
Comments
0
Reading
5 d, 14 h
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101 In F-city, there was a neighborhood where apartment blocks and towers gave way to rolling lawns, miniature patches of forest, and sporting fields. The mansions—decadent odes to magical architecture—nestled around the curves of artificial hills or in groves of trees, strategically planted to give the owners the illusion of space and nature in a city-state where those two things were precious commodities. The boy found the address he’d been looking for in a thatch of bottlebrush-shaped trees…-
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They barely had time to say thanks and bye to Instructor Fragment. As soon as their feet hit the ground, students from the next group were jogging up, and their group was supposed to be jogging off to their own second session. Everly was staggering ahead of Alden and Kon. She was clutching her shoes in her hand, and her hair buns had mostly unraveled. ****** They had a three-minute water and bathroom break at the end of Instructor Marion’s session. Alden felt like someone had sucked the…
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The wordchain Lute had bestowed on Alden was fun, mind-blowing, and a total menace. He had learned to cascade juggle five balls from Gustavo during a couple of sleepless nights in intake. Under the effects of the wordchain, he discovered he could easily do it with pieces of crumpled notebook paper while he was walking up a flight of stairs. But sitting still in his Intro to Other Worlds class was proving difficult. People were so damn noisy. His stomach was so damn busy. Friction was so damn…
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98 “You’re all idiots.” Lexi Roberts—smug bastard—said this while examining Alden, Lute, and Haoyu on Monday morning. It was 6:45, he’d just come in from a run, and he looked disgustingly energized standing there drinking an iced black coffee from the campus shop. “I got up at two o’clock to use the bathroom, and “Kon and Mehdi’s group decided to go all the way down to the stadium in F,” Haoyu groaned while he trudged across the kitchen toward his slow-cooker. “To see a spell…
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97 Alden didn’t write his name or the names of any future targets on The Beat List. He did see a lot of the other B’s update their personal hit lists, though, while he was putting his sandbags back in the correct stack. Not a single bag had burst. They were bulletproof, according to Rahul. You might as well be bulletproof, too, Alden thought as he zipped his empty suitcase back up and lifted the telescoping handle. Though it had been wounded during its assault on the club president’s cart full of…
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96 Alden was keeping his goal for the night simple. Assuming they were allowed to do whatever they wanted with their club practice time, he was just going to use this opportunity to learn what it felt like to run around and protect himself with a burden of this size, shape, and weight. How did the hundred kilos of unpreserved sandbags trapped inside the preserved suitcase affect his skill fatigue? How did moving around with it work? Could he reliably keep his hands on it to maintain entrustment without…
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95 It took an afternoon, an evening, and an entire morning. But on Sunday at noon, when it was finally finished and they collapsed in the living room to examine the fruits of their labor, they all arrived at the same conclusion. “Is it just me,” said Alden from where he was sprawled on top of the chesterfield sofa, enjoying the smell of the soft leather, “or is this place really awesome now?” “It’s perfect.” Haoyu was playing with the app on his tablet that controlled the dimmers on all of…
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94 Alden gave Victor one last hug before tucking him back into his carrier. A tag that proved he’d been scanned for diseases and magical contraband was clipped to the outside. He set the cat on the floor of the teleportation bay he’d been assigned. “You’ll be with Jeremy in a few minutes. Be good.” Both of you. When the teleport was complete and he received a text from Jeremy confirming that Victor was in his arms, he sighed with relief. Great work, Victor. Smuggling people through…
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93 The first time Maricel Alcantara caught a glimpse of her own future, she was five. The jeepney put them out in front of the hospital on a hot, sunny day. Her mother was gripping her fingers with one hand and helping her grandmother with the other. “This is the wrong entrance,” her mother said, staring up at the tall building. “We have to walk.” “We can’t be late,” her grandmother fretted. “If we’re late—” “Nothing bad will happen. We won’t miss it. And if we do, it’s…
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The wind was so strong it almost tore Alden’s plaid shirt out of his hands when he stepped out into the night. He rolled it into a tube and stuffed it under his arm before looking up to admire the gleaming neon sign and colorful lighted spikes on the roof of the apartment building. The party was still underway, and some of the guests had found fresh energy reserves to draw on. They’d been starting up the karaoke when he said goodbye to Kon and thanked him for the invite. A minute later, the car he’d…
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